The Bruins’ development pipeline is in the middle of a real overhaul, and this summer has only accelerated it. Providence is taking on a different look for next season and beyond, with changes reaching from the coaching staff all the way down to the draft picks who never became part of the organization’s future.
The biggest shift in Providence came behind the bench. Ryan Mougenel is out after taking an assistant coaching job with the Vancouver Canucks, and former P-Bruins captain Trent Whitfield is stepping in to replace him. That move fits into a broader reset around the AHL club, where the roster is also expected to skew younger.
Two familiar names are also gone from the system entirely. Fabian Lysell and Georgii Merkulov both left the organization for fresh starts with the Colorado Avalanche after never quite getting to Boston.
Veterans Riley Tufte and Patrick Brown have also moved on from Providence, which opens the door for a younger group to take over in the AHL. Players such as Riley Duran, Michael Callahan, Dans Locmelis, Ivan Ivan and Simon Zajicek are among the ones expected to carry more of the load.
Then came another major turn this weekend: three Bruins draft picks will not be signed by the club. Oskar Jelvik, a fifth-round pick in 2021; Mason Langenbrunner, a fifth-round pick in 2020; and goalie Phillip Svedeback, a fourth-round pick in 2021, all became free agents at the Aug. 15 deadline for drafted players coming out of the college ranks. That came on top of the Bruins trading the rights to Andre Gasseau, a seventh-round pick in 2021, once it was clear he wasn’t going to sign either.
Put together, it’s a clear sign that the Bruins are moving on from a whole stretch of their organizational depth chart.
“You're watching Providence play [this past season] and identifying the players that may be able to make the jump to help us next year. I think the job that our player development guys did with James [Hagens] this year in the amount of time they spent at Boston College to get him ready, and to make the jump [to the NHL] is important," said Don Sweeney.
There are opportunities there that we need to continue to leverage and take advantage of across the board in every one of our players. But Marco [Sturm] had an eye towards that.
“He had patience of what was going on [when he coached in the AHL] with players that were going to graduate and go through ebbs and flows in terms of where their own [game was]… it's not a linear path for any player. I think he's got a really good eye for when a player is able to grasp what he's trying to do systematically and allow him to make some mistakes.
But hopefully the progression is there. That's the merging part that we're all trying to do [at the NHL level].
And our guys are out communicating with our next prospects and the guys that we're hopefully going to implement into our lineups down the future, and they've done a really good job.”
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